


Fools in Love

by Skyler10



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Humor, Intentionally Bad, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 18:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10519818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: The Lord of Time longs for his true love, Lady Rose of the Powell Estate, but why does she show up to his house in tears?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the April Fool’s Day purple prose challenge on @doctorroseprompts. Utter crack, purple ridiculousness. Not sorry.  

For his 30th birthday, the lonely Doctor, Lord of Time, decided to throw a merry ball for all the suitable ladies and gentlemen throughout the land. It would be the most perfect excuse to see her again – the elusive Lady Rose of the Powell Estate. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do, no mountain he wouldn’t scale, no feat left undone in Hercules’ repertoire of manly struggles with the demons of the depths, that he wouldn’t do for his beloved, but alas! Did she even remember he existed? Was she kept up all though the deafening silence of the long, cold, dark night to fret over his love as he was for her?

He had to know! He couldn’t bear to spend another night unsure of the bent of her most womanly affections.

His noble brothers in combat from the horrid war were no help. His uncle, Colonel Wilfred Noble, and Captain Jack Harkness only pushed him further with their reminders that he wasn’t getting any younger, and 30 was past time to find a bride to share his burdens and adorations. His well-meaning, but brash and out-spoken cousin, the Lady Donna, pestered him with reminders that he needed an heir. She suggested the ball, which he knew to not be entirely unselfish on her part, as she too longed for a companion for her journey through the harrowing forest of this mortal existence.

Thus, the invitations went out far and wide through the countryside to every stately home and noble household. He sighed as he sat at his oak writing desk in his office and signed the one to the house of Tyler with an extra prayer that she would accept his most humble plea for her presence upon the occasion of his birthday.

Oh! How it would pain him if she did not show! He turned his gaze to the horizon out the tall window, whereupon her home lay just beyond. It would not do for the messenger to be waylaid or the letter to become lost in the post. Yet, if he delivered the invitation himself, would not he appear too forward and scare her away with his ardent passion? The decision weighed heavily on him like a ton of anxious elephants tumbling their way across the savannah of his heart.

Behold! Just then, he was spared the agony of his great and terrible choice by the appearance of his beloved, knocking at his open door.

“Lord Doctor, I have traveled many miles in my gilded coach to express my overwhelming pain and heartbreak.” She wrung her gloved hands in front of her floral dress bedecked in pink roses for her namesake, no doubt a purchase of her mother’s during their latest season in Londontown. “You know I am not a woman to be tossed to the side like a reed upon the riverbank in a tempestuous storm!”  

“Lady Rose! Whatever has caused you distress?” The Lord Doctor was on his feet in an instant. “I would defend you from any danger! I would slay a thousand dragons if only you would tell me where I might find them!”

He was dismayed to see tears well up in her honey orbs, sparkling like the fountains of Versailles in the summer sun. They spilled down upon her cheeks, forming tiny diamond rivers of sorrow.

“Then why, sir, pray you cause me such anguish? Lady Martha and Lord Mickey both have confirmed they received their cordial invitations for the celebration of your 30th year and Captain Jack tells of a whole host of ladies who have filled his dance card and are already fighting for the honor of being his escort for the evening.”

“Really? Hm. Would have thought that honor would have gone to Sir Ianto,” the Lord Doctor mused.

“It is!” Rose replied, flustered by his change in topic. “Good sir, I will not be treated thusly! Last summer, you spoke to me in the tone of a lover, and through the winter your sonnents kept me warm with the flame of foolish romance. I believed your claims that you cared only for me! But I am not a toy to be cast aside. I demand to know from your own lips if the rumors in the city are true.”

“What rumors might those be? You know of my affections and yet you do not return them nor reject them, my lady! How can you say that it is I who are casting you aside when I received no declarations of love in return, nor any hint that you had even read the outpourings of my heart!”

The Lady Rose stared at him, open-mouthed, unsure of what to say. To be fair, his really great hair and tight-fitting suit often had this effect upon her, but this time, it was his words that had her flummoxed.

“But the Lady Cassandra assured me that she would bring them to you when she came to visit!”

“She never delivered any letters from you, most beautiful of Roses. The only ones I received were from your mother inquiring after my health and when I was to visit, but how could I come to dinner when I had made such an arse of myself in letterform and you had no desire to see my countenance evermore!”

Rose took in his panting chest, his fist crumpling a piece of paper, the distress of his entire form.

“But… I passed Madame Reinette in your garden as I entered… she assured me that she would be your partner for the evening, that you had long since abandoned deriving joy from stringing me along with false hope…”

A great hurricane of fury sparked in the Lord Doctor’s eyes, swirling in their dark chocolate depths like an oncoming storm that knew no beginning nor end, timeless and relentless in its rage.

“Madame Reinette spoke falsely to you, my lady. There could be no more untrue thing if it was spoken by the Devil of Hell himself riding on a chariot of flames. It is you, and you alone that I love.”

Rose nearly burst to hear it, but there was one unresolved matter still burning within her injured heart threatening to shatter her into a thousand pieces, the reason she had fled all this way across the countryside until she could know the cold and bitter truth.

“If those sweet words from those sweet lips are to be believed, sir, then why is it that I am not seen as fit to be in attendance at your grand celebration of your birth? Are you so ashamed of your heart’s desire that you would keep me hidden like a secret so repulsive you’d rather disown it than let others throw their arrows? I know my family’s estate is not as grand as that of others, or your own, but I cannot be your mistress by night and not know you by day. Surely you do not think me so low as to be desperate enough for that!”

“Whatever do you mean, my lady?” The Lord Doctor scrunched up his noble brow in confusion at this speech. Surely she knew it was _she_ who kept _him_ away? That he would have raced to her side at a moment’s notice if only she would have beckoned him? “I care not for arrows. I would take any archer’s wrath before abandoning you, if you were mine to love. If only I knew of your emotions, my lady, if only I knew why you keep me in suspense when I want, need, crave your presence by my side to the end of our days!”

“Oh Doctor!” she sighed, and yet, her question remained unanswered. Despite the sincerity of his speech, she found her gaze wandering back to the paper now nearly destroyed in his fist. “What is that in your hand?”

The Lord Doctor blinked his long lashes in surprise. He had forgotten entirely his task upon him when she had entered. He lost all sense in his ardor when she was in his view.

“My lady, I must confess. This is your invitation. My greatest apologies at its delay and the heartache it caused you. How I wish I could go back in time and alter my course! I would have delivered it to you myself before any others went out to our friends and the gentlemen and women of this land. Yours should have been the first hand that touched the announcement. I was so unsure if you would even attend or if you would laugh at my pain when you showed up with some pretty lad like Sir Adam or Lieutenant Stone upon your arm. I could not endure such torture after so many harried nights wishing you were sleeping soundly by my side.”

Rose approached him then, tears of sorrow and sure rejection transformed through the chrysalis of revelation. She stroked a delicate hand down his lapel, regretting the months of bitter misunderstanding that had passed between them.

“There’s nothing I want more than to attend your ball, my lord, but I’d rather have no accompaniment at all than go with someone who isn’t you.”

“My lady, I think it is long past time I asked you a question that has been burning on my soul since our tryst last summer, like children in our innocence in that idyllic city by the sea. You have captured my heart and held it wholly and completely since the day we met and there is no other for me. I wish to hear it, to know it, to be assured from your own perfect pink lips that there is hope you feel the same. And could for the rest of our days.”

Rose’s hand flew to said lips, a blush coloring her cheeks as if she were truly a rose, unspoiled and blossoming into the fullness of springtime. The Lord Doctor opened a small drawer in his desk with a key, and removed a silver and gold ornate box from its compartment. He bowed to one knee as if before the goddess of his worship. Sunlight streamed in from the sheer-curtained windows, lighting her blonde tresses as an angel is illumined by the divine. He took her now trembling hand in his own and she dropped the other from her lips to brush lightly through his chestnut strands and down to his sideburns.

He leaned into her touch, but persisted in his long-awaited inquiry, a quest he would not be found a coward in pursuing no matter how many tried to throw him off his path.

“Lady Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate, queen of my destiny, guardian of all that is sweet and kind and good, would you do me the infinite honor of becoming my…” His voice wavered with emotion and tears sprung to his eyes. “Of becoming my wife?”

“Oh Lord Doctor, can it be true?” Rose shook her head in awe and the disbelief of those who have just had their greatest lifelong dream granted to them from heaven’s gates upon a cloud. “But, I know the stories of men who have asked such a question and recanted when their eye caught a prettier treasure. How long will you love me if I accept such a request?”

“Forever, until the ends of time and even then we shall not be torn apart in our eternal devotion. No treasure in any realm could compare to you, my Rose. My heart. My only desire.” He pressed a firm kiss to the back of her hand and returned his gaze to her own.

It was there, in those fathomless, incomprehensible, vulnerable eyes that she saw the truth of his words. His promise was all she had ever prayed for, and she felt the answer bubble up from within her like a spring come back to life after a hard frozen winter.

“Yes, a million yeses, to the furthest ends of the universe I will go with you, my love, and even then, our love would think it a day’s journey. There is no tide that could lap upon the shores of my attentions that could tempt me to swim away from your safe harbor. And yet, you are the greatest adventure I could dream of and I pray we never return.”

The Doctor stood and grinned bright and wide as the sun.

“Our life will be one that bards sing of in the tales of old. Children will sit upon the laps of their elders, begging to hear the tale of the Lord and Lady of Time and their unending happiness.”

She felt a circle of metal at the tip of her finger. She glanced down to see the most beautiful diamond she had ever beheld. Only his reassurances kept her from protesting that such a jewel was beyond her worth and far more than she deserved. But to honor his wishes, she decided to accept his gift and instead wear it proudly for all of her days to come.

“My love,” he asked, breathless with hope, “would you do me the pleasure of accompanying me to my 30th birthday celebration as my most beloved, my fiancée, and the light of my existence?”

She answered him with a kiss that she had been saving for him since the day they met, during her first season in Londontown, when she had turned to her mum and said “That’s him, Mum. That’s the man ‘m going to marry.” Her mother had just giggled along with her and said “If he makes you happy, love.” Her father had been more reserved in his approval, and outright discouraged her when they met again by the sea last summer, wanting to make sure the Lord Doctor could handle his estate without the aid of his dearly departed parents since their untimely loss. It was this fear of disapproval that had led them to hide their affair during the warm summer months of young lovers shrouded in the boughs of willow trees by the river and tucked away in long-abandoned cottages and abbey ruins.

That had been where he’d first made love to her: in the belltower of a crumbling medieval abbey, taking shelter from a typical English summerstorm that had risen from the horizon unseen until it was too late. They had matched their passion to the thunder, their moans to the rain. The memory had fueled many fantasies they had entertained in the desperate nights alone, when all they could do was wish it was the other’s touch and not their own replaying that memory over and over until they had every detail in vivid color. 

But now those lonely nights of longing were over. They were free from the chains of unrequited passion, united in the anticipation of a ceaseless forever to spend together as husband and wife… but first, there was a ball to attend… 


End file.
